The primary element of the theoretical narrative in this chapter is the
flowchart, which brings the three stages together in a dynamic way. In
addition, the narrative addresses the role of judgment, style, rationality, and
the passions in the process of critical thinking. The applications to
follow are designed to aid students in piecing all parts of the process
together. If the students have worked through exercises described in
previous chapters, they are in a position to do it all on their own. I
conclude this part with a discussion of rubrics, which bring all parts of
the process together but are simple enough to aid you in setting your course up
for critical thinking work

II. Teaching Points

When all is said and done, one should have in place a flexible and powerful
B.S. detector. Think of the flowchart in the Theory section of this
chapter as the schematic diagram of this detector. If things have gone
well, your students should have internalized something like this, i.e., a
networked set of guidelines that aids them in constructing arguments of their
own and evaluating arguments of others. If something stinks, the detector
will announce it; if not, then the detector will chug along until you have a
compelling argument or a favorable evaluation. For an image, think of an
inverted tree-like array of connected flags that pop up in a certain order as
one moves through the process of critical thinking, with certain paths signaling
good arguments and other paths signaling bad ones. It is useful to think
of it like this, since you can describe the detector as the product that
explicit instruction in critical thinking delivers.

Don't put it all together too soon. You should work on the
parts---i.e., argument identification, (re)construction, and
evaluation---early and often, both independently and in combination.
Save the detailed, start-to-finish argument analysis until near the end of
the class. Trying to do this all too soon will smudge the conceptual
boundaries that separate the stages, and that will make it difficult to
acquire conscious appreciation for the complexity of the critical thinking
process.

Tie the model you use to the skills list you use. Much of the
discussion in the theoretical narrative after Chapter Two has focused on the
three-stage model of critical thinking. The skills mentioned in
Chapter Two have been mentioned and employed, but they have not been the
primary focus. In your class, it might behoove you to make sure that
they are more integrally linked. (One way to do this is developed and
defended in the Theory section of Chapter Three.) For instance, early it might be
better to focus on the skills. Students will be familiar with most of
them from other contexts, and you can trade that familiarity in for some
early work on critical thinking. As the course moves along, however,
and you develop the three-stage model, you should discuss the ways in which
the skills come into play. By the end, your students should have a
pretty good idea of the stages at which a given skill is typically
applied.

Develop your own flowchart. The flowchart I have supplied is
general and represents one way to lay out the process of critical thinking
as it is manifested across a wide range of circumstances. Most
implementations of this handbook will not be so general; rather, they will
be embedded in a certain thematic and/or disciplinary context. After
you are proficient in the exercise of critical thinking skills, It is useful
to develop your own subject-specific flowchart. Do this by reflecting
on how you attack a problem or construct an argument in your own discipline,
noting the methods used and questions asked. You develop flowcharts of
this sort by distilling patterns of inquiry from an array of specific
instances of inquiry. This requires recognition of the inquiry and
then conscious appreciation for its steps and nuances.

Note stylistic differences. It will become apparent early
that people approach arguments in different ways. Some are inclined to
see arguments where others see none, and people will reconstruct and
evaluate arguments in very different ways. It is important to call
attention to these differences. Granted, not all attempts will be
acceptable, but there are typically many distinct ways to think critically
about an argument. One valuable upshot of this emphasis is comfort---a
student will be less anxious about the process of critical thinking if they
know that they can do it in a way that is consistent with their own
intellectual approach than if they felt that they must dramatically change
the way they do intellectual business.

Don't downplay the passions. Critical thinking can get
in the way of a passionate response, or it can itself be a passionate
response. Do not ignore the importance and the prevalence of
passionate actions and reactions. There will be times when critical
thinking just gets in the way. Talk about these times---make sure that
they know that it is not a one-size-fits-all tool for every job. Take
advantage of contexts in which you plan to do no critical thinking to
comment that critical thinking is not especially appropriate, given the
context and your goals. At other times, critical thinking can itself
become passionate, since evaluation is often a highly charged emotional
affair. This can be a good thing, but the passions can also get in the
way. Call attention to this---perhaps in a discussion that gets a bit
raucous, or in a text that goes a bit too far into hyperbole. Without
passion, life is a tedious daily grind until death mercifully brings the
whole business to a halt; don't let students think that critical thinking is
only valuable to those who embrace the grind.

II. Instructional Ideas

Have the students develop their own flowcharts. Just as this
exercise is useful for you, so too is it useful for your students.
Asking the students to do this in groups, or perhaps on their own, can be an
effective way of reinforcing their own understanding of the process as it
has informed work in your class. (You might wish to do it in
discussion, if you believe that it is too daunting as a group or individual
exercise.)

Have students work out the relationships between the outcomes of a
group critical thinking exercise. If you break a class up into groups
and give them a single argumentative text to analyze, you will almost always
get as many different results as there are groups. Don't just let this
go without comment. Ask the students in discussion to work out the
relationships and differences between these results. Have them work
out which differences are stylistic and which are more substantive.
Often, the differences will reflect varying emphases, but they may also
represent different degrees of charity as well as different approaches to
what is tacit in the text. This is a way of calling attention to the
variety of intellectual styles and to the fact that superficial differences
can conceal deep similarities. Perhaps more importantly, this is a way
to keep the critical thinking dialogue going at a level where the students
have more at stake.

Have students "put it all together" on their own.
Raise an issue that is relevant to the topic of your course and then let the
students identify, reconstruct, and evaluate two opposing positions on this
issue. Ask them to make a decision for themselves between these
positions and defend their choice. Have them report this in a 5 to 6
page essay, or in an oral presentation. Be sure to follow up the
assignment with a discussion that allows the students to talk amongst
themselves about the variations in their results.

Keep a critical thinking journal. As soon as your students
know enough about critical thinking to do it on their own in a conscious and
reflective way, have them keep a journal in which they record the details of
episodes in which they think critically. This will help them attend to
the various stages of the process, and will also enable them to work on
aspects that they find troublesome. This should focus on critical
thinking episodes that show up outside of class. Ask for, say, 10
entries by semester's end.

Assign three-part writing assignments. Have them locate an
argumentative text (or distribute one) and assign 2 to 3 page argument
analysis essays on this text. If the text is lengthy or
argumentatively complex, focus them on a part of it that contains a single
argument. It is better in these essays to have them attend to the
details; given this, one argument will suffice. You can either assign
them the argument, or you can have them locate it. If you are nearing
the end of the course, it might be time to let them demonstrate their
argument identification ability by selecting their own argument for
analysis. (To this end, I recommend the "one paragraph rule",
which has students concentrate on arguments that fit inside a single
paragraph; arguments much larger than this will be difficult to treat
comprehensively in an essay of this size.) The essays will contain
three sections. In the first section, they should identify the
location and nature of the argument they have selected for evaluation.
The second section contains their reconstruction of this argument, with both
explicit and tacit steps indicated. The final section itself has two
parts. The first will detail their understanding of how the author
intended the argument to work, and the second will contain their own
evaluation of the argument, be it critical or supportive. Either way,
the second sub-section should contain an argument of their own. All of
the sections but the last sub-section should be charitable.

Full-blown debates. These are very useful if you have the
time and a topic that deserves special attention. Select a issue that
is debatable and divide the class up into as many groups as their are sides
to the issue. Give them a week and one or two class periods to prepare (one
if TR, two if MWF). Devote the last class of the week to the
debate. Have the groups appoint a spokesperson to make the initial
case, which will take from 5 to 10 minutes. Give them all 5 minutes to
work up a rebuttal, and then another 3 minutes in which to rebut the
arguments of the other side(s). End with a general discussion of the
debate. This is effective in that it forces groups to think not only
about arguments that work for their conclusions, but also about the
arguments that could be raised as objections to their conclusions. Thus,
they approach arguments as both producers and consumers. It is good to
do this near the end of the semester.

Use role-playing exercises. If critical thinking derives its
importance in your area because of its connection with certain specific
roles, have the students engage in role playing exercises where they must
employ the process on their feet. For example, if you are training
military officers who must solve problems and direct soldiers with limited
information and limited time, it is effective to put them into situations
where they must make quick decisions among options. An effectively
designed role-playing exercise can be used to teach the critical thinking
process in this context and to test the extent to which it has been
learned.

III. Rubrics

III.1 Describing Rubrics

Rubrics are authoritative rules that guide conduct. In a class where
critical thinking is a point of emphasis, a rubric can be created that aids you
and your students as you critically engage topics and texts. This rubric
would be a brief set of subject specific rules that guide evaluation by
structuring engagement. These rules should serve double duty---they would
embody the spirit of the critical thinking model you employ, and they would
serve as a lens on the course material, bringing into focus those aspects of the
topics and texts about which you want students to think critically. Think
of the rubric as a study guide schema that can be applied to many different
texts throughout a course. Each time a new topic is broached or text cracked for
the purpose of critical thinking instruction, students would inspect the text to
see how the rules that constitute the rubric are applied in it. An
instrument such as this makes it easier for new students of critical thinking to
engage in analysis, and it also helps ensure consistency of evaluation across
the class.

Rubrics should be fairly specific, drawing on the subject matter of a
course. Any course in which critical thinking is taught in an embedded way
could be enhanced with rubrics. In general, these instruments will be
associated with topics or themes. In a course that is developed around a
them, such as a Core Discovery course, one rubric may be all that is
needed. In courses that are more thematically diverse, you might wish to
develop one rubric per theme. (This is not necessary, of course, if you
wish only to use one of the themes to teach critical thinking.) There are
several ways to develop a rubric. After a review of the texts you plan to
assign, you might identify their essential dimensions and then create a rule
that captures the way in which each dimension structures the overall
topic. Alternatively, you might develop a set of general study questions
for each text and then identify commonalities among these questions, converting
the commonalities into rules. Each rule should be the kind of thing that
focuses the student on an aspect of a text that is crucial to their
understanding of the text itself as well as its relation to the broader
theme. (Of course, not every rule may apply to every text; when this
happens, though, you should make a point of noting it.)

A well-designed rubric will help initiate the process of critical
thinking. In the first place, it will focus student attention on what
really matters for the purpose of the course, and that will help them home in on
the arguments that are most fundamental. Second, by helping them identify
what has less importance, it will aid them as they search out claims to use in
reconstructing arguments. Third, it will structure their evaluation of the
text relative to the course goals, since it will reinforce the dimensions along
with analysis should take place. Finally, it will help bring a measure of
systematicity and coherence to the various evaluations conducted throughout a
semester. By using the rubric consistently, students will come to
appreciate relationships among texts, and this will make it easier for them to
forge a coherent understanding of the course as a whole. Of course, the
rubric won't do the work for them---they must know when and how to apply it, and
they must use it effectively. Students won't be able to plug it in and
thoughtlessly generate argument identifications, reconstructions, and
evaluations, but it will point them in the right direction.

III.2 Illustrating Rubrics

Philosophy 202---Symbolic Logic (Michael O'Rourke). Much
of the work in this class involves constructing and evaluating proofs in a
first-order deductive proof system. These are highly stylized
arguments, with premises that lead to conclusions in conformity with strict
inference rules. The practice of proof helps students come to
appreciate the nature of the following relation that obtains between
conclusion and premises, which is a focal theme of the course. Given
this, I have constructed a rubric that aids students in constructing and
evaluating proofs. I encourage my students to apply this rubric
whenever they set down to do a proof. The elements of the rubric are
sequentially ordered, and are cast as questions that can be asked of a
particular proof problem. Taken together, they constitute a flowchart
that can guide the process of proof construction. They are as follows:

Can you convince yourself that the conclusion follows from the
premises? If so, move to (2).

Are there any proof steps (i.e., a certain type of inference rule ---
see Inference
Rules) that can be applied to simplify the premises? If there
are, apply them until the premises are as simple as possible and
move to (3), or your reach your conclusion, in which case STOP.
If there are not, move to (3).

Are there any conclusion-driven proof methods (i.e., a second
type of inference rule --- see Inference
Rules) that can be applied? If so, apply them to set up a
sub-proof and fill out the details of the sub-proof by returning to (1)
and restarting the process for that sub-proof. If not, go to (4).

Are there any premise-driven proof methods (i.e., a third type of
inference rule --- see Inference
Rules) that apply? If so, apply them to set up a sub-proof and
fill out the details of the sub-proof by returning to (1) and restarting
the process for that sub-proof. If not, go to (5).

Set up a proof by contradiction (see Inference
Rules) and return to (1) to begin filling out the details of the
sub-proof.

For more details about this rubric, see the Philosophy
202 homepage, and the Proof
Strategies handout in particular. This rubric supplies a set of
rules that guides my logic students as they construct arguments that meet
certain constraints. Granted, these are very formal arguments, but the
process is no different from the standard critical thinking process for
being more abstract.

Core 101---The Monsters We Make (Kerry McKeever, Michael O'Rourke,
Dean Panttaja, George Wray). This class
is a year-long exploration of both monsters and the themes surrounding the
concept of monstrosity. We will look at the creation, development, and
multiple reiterations of the monstrous, through both classic and
contemporary works in literature, film, and art. Application of this
information will help the student identify the societal, political, and
cultural mechanisms used to influence and shape contemporary conceptions of
the monster in the real world. In other words, the course will focus
on the dynamic of demonization---how it works and how we work it. Since this
is a Core Discovery course, we are required to teach critical thinking in an
explicit way to our students. To aid us in this, we have designed a
thematic rubric that will structure our initial engagement with each text we
study.

There are two ways to characterize this
rubric. First, one can think of it dimensionally. The dominant
dimensions are those of essence and process. In our
texts, there are two roles whose essence concern us, viz., the monster
and the person(s) who make the monster (i.e., the maker). Who
fills these roles in the text and why/how do they fill them? At any
given point in the text, one can inquire as to who fills these roles.
However, since these texts tend to have narratives that unfold in time, we
have our second dimension, process, which can be seen as orthogonal
to the essence dimension. The role of monster may be filled at
one time by one character and by another character at a different
time. Likewise for the maker. The process dimension
focuses attention on the changes in the way these roles are filled in the
text, and why those changes come to pass.

Second, the rubric can be cast as a set of
questions. The first form supports a somewhat visual understanding of
the rubric, but this form is more portable and easier to apply to
texts. The questions we will have our students ask of each text are as
follows:

Who is the monster?

Why are they a monster?

Who makes the monster?

Why do they make the monster?

How do the answers to these questions
change through the text?

These are simple and easy to commit to
memory, but they will work to ensure that our students take what we want
them to take from the texts we assign. Further, it will focus their
attention on those aspects of the texts that can be regarded as
argumentative, smoothing the way for serious critical thinking
exercise. For more details, see the Monsters
homepage or the Rubric handout.